Private Space
You”ll never get to the moon on the government dole.

By Eli Lehrer, senior editor, The American Enterprise
February 25, 2002 10:30 a.m.

s Ronald Reagan envisioned it in 1984, America's space station would have quickly earned a place among the modern world's wonders. Within ten years, Reagan promised, the nation would construct a veritable city in space, a quarter-mile long and as nearly as bright as Venus in the night sky, a place full of labs, Reagan said, "to produce quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, and in metals and lifesaving medicines."

It never happened: Instead it took 14 years for the first hardware to reach orbit and another two before a crew could move in. In the budget released earlier this month, the administration singles out the half-completed orbiting tin can of an international space station as one of the worst examples of mismanagement in the entire government. The budget has grown from $17.4 billion in 1993 to over $30 billion today.

Worse, the space station has little scientific or diplomatic use. NASA's own list of 2001 accomplishments places the space station next-to-last. Almost nothing about the space station has appeared in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Although NASA says that 15 foreign nations take part in the program only three, Canada, Japan, and Russia, will actually help build the space station: The others have just promised to provide experiments when and if the station is ready.

One might still justify the space station, however, on the grounds of national pride, technology spin-offs or public interest. But today's space station uses off-the-shelf computer hardware and, as an explicitly international venture, does little for national pride. Modern astronauts hardly fit the mold of bold explorers. Given the space station's mechanical woes, indeed, they have become little more than space janitors. Every elementary-school science class includes lessons about the Voyager missions' grand tour of the outer solar system but who can name a space shuttle astronaut besides Christa McAuliffe?

America's human-space-flight program produces bad, uninteresting science at immense cost. The best scientific missions, on the other hand, have produced much of public interest at modest cost. The Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray observatory have vastly expanded knowledge of the distant corners of the universe along with stunning pictures. More exciting missions are already in progress: In three years, the Cassini-Huygens mission will begin to explore Saturn's moon Titian for organic molecules similar to those that gave rise to life on Earth.

New missions could answer important scientific questions and stimulate public interest in science. New space telescopes and comet-exploration missions could reveal the origins of our solar system and the universe. Probes might find life beneath the water-ice shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. A reconnaissance mapping of the asteroid belt could unlock vast mineral wealth. But space-station commitments don't leave any money for such ventures.

The private sector can do better. Already, the X Prize Foundation has attracted 22 competitors seeking a $10 million reward for building a reusable space-tourism vehicle. One Virginia company even books orbital flights — similar to the one John Glenn took in 1962 — for $98,000. And cash-strapped Russia has already sold two tourist slots on the international space station. Private space hotels could well launch within 25 years. Landing people on Mars and a return to the moon will need public-sector help but, even there, private companies could do important work. The government could provide tax credits and even X-Prize-style payoffs (in the billion-dollar range) for companies that produce the needed advances. But it doesn't need to specify build the hardware or even run the flights.

Given its international commitments and the vast sums already invested, NASA probably can't abandon the space station right away and, indeed, with private management, it could still produce scientific payoff. But cutting back obligations for the space station and other human space flight as quickly as possible and redirecting the money towards science offers the biggest payoffs. Americans have a future in space but the government doesn't need to take us there.